Click here to witness it.

Go boldly, scroll, click, ‘experience’. Witness the drama, the grit, the pain. These guys are serious about the war on crime and terror. Tune in Saturdays at 9 for next weeks nail-biting show! Woah… hold up a second—this is a website for a local Police Department, where citizens of Milwaukee are expected to go to find out how to file an accident report or pay a parking ticket or to get some news about their local area. So why does it look like the latest HBO police show based around post-apocalyptic urban warfare in a dystopian police state?

Buried at the very bottom of this long and dizzying page are two words: ‘Vision’ and ‘Mission’, and if you mouseover them you get a demure box with some small type with the following words for each:

Vision
A Milwaukee where all can live safely and without fear, protected by a police department with the highest ethical and professional standards.

Mission
In partnership with the community, we will create and maintain neighborhoods capable of sustaining civic life. We commit to reducing the levels of crime, fear, and disorder through community-based, problem-oriented, and data-driven policing.

Live without fear? Protection? Community partnership? Civic life? But I just scrolled through seven levels of hell to get here—I saw riot police with pump action shotguns on the surface of the moon, I saw barren urban landscapes reminiscent of The Wire, riot police in full armour wielding automatic machine guns. It’s as if the people who conceptualised and designed this site just completely ignored the mission statements, which isn’t surprising because clearly their desks must have been buried three feet deep in crushed monster energy drink cans and DC comics.

The site was designed by Cramer-Krasselt, an advertising company who primarily create TV advertising slots for consumer brands and even worked on some Sopranos stuff for HBO—I thought I recognised that flipped on its side gun graphic. Evidently the fabled ad agency cocaine abuse of yore is alive and well, that can be the only explanation for producing such an aggressive, oppressive, fear-inducing, gimmick driven website under the premise of instilling a feeling of safety, trust and ‘community partnership’ within the citizens who live under the iron fists of these armoured-car driving robocops. I think I’d be worried about leaving my house. Make that definitely worried—I just realised that if you click on the police dog, he growls and barks at you. Wow.

What’s really disturbing is whether this is the reality behind how the Police see themselves now? Are they wanting to recruit overgrown teenage boys with Hollywood fuelled fantasies where they run around like soldiers with machine guns? It would also be interesting to know if the same committee that signed off on those Vision and Mission statements were the same people who signed-off on this creative, because if it was, they should all be asked to undergo screening for schizophrenia.

Soon enough we’ll all be getting pepper sprayed in the face.

Since my post about Facebook and PayPal’s branding a couple of weeks ago, PayPal have rolled out a much improved UI, so an update to that post is in order.

In short: This is a vast improvement. The overall UI has been improved greatly by simplifying the primary navigation into three main signposts: Buy, Sell, Transfer, which makes perfect sense as these are after all PayPal’s core services. The login is now at the top of the page in its own menu bar with tabs to toggle between services for individuals and businesses.

The overall visual language is much more friendly, the typography is clean and the messaging much simplified. Simplicity is the keyword with this redesign and the copy reflects that with its humanist approach, we now finally feel that humans may actually work at PayPal, rather than the robots that must have been responsible for previous iterations.

The main image on the homepage is a little cliché however — aaah the faceless couple stare out across the beautiful lake, they are at perfect peace to enjoy the simplicity of nature now that all their online payment woes are handled safely and securely by their trusty friend: PayPal. Vomit. Aah well, still a huge improvement on the dreadful mid 90s stock they were using up until last week.

As you click deeper into the site the layout continues with the simple approach. Copy is kept to a minimum and rather nice illustrations help drive the point home, with prominent and descriptive buttons guiding you to where you want to be.

Sadly, this all falls apart once you login, as you are then back to the clunky old interface that’s been in place for years. I can only assume that a rethink is underway and will be updated sometime soon—but it is somewhat telling—they’ve added a new cosmetic surface to appeal to new customers, but the underlying product and service design is exactly the same: Unwieldy, convoluted and generally displeasing. Now there’s a tagline.

Both Facebook and Paypal enjoy dominating their marketplaces — Facebook claims to have 800 million active accounts worldwide, and Paypal boasts 230 million and growing, so there’s no doubt that both companies enjoy ubiquity, but does this ubiquity equate to a warm and glowing brand perception?

Not for me, which is why I singled out these companies, and I don’t think I’m alone. While Facebook has become an everyday part of our lives, moaning about Facebook is also a very popular theme. The rollout of new features such as the activity feed, the integration of messaging with chat and Timeline have all met with moans, groans and sometimes outright rage. A lot of that is probably down to our human aversion to change, but surely rollouts could be dealt with in a better way that serves to warm people to the notion and bring them on board with progress? Privacy concerns are another constant sticking point for Facebook which regularly make the news and the blogs as well as dozens if not hundreds of usually dumb and unfounded status update memes that spread about like wildfire. Privacy concerns are obviously a real issue for a company based around using personal information to target advertising and sell to marketers. You’d think Facebook would work harder on PR to counter these worries.

Now amidst a slew of lawsuits regarding their IPO that have merely been fobbed off as ‘without merit’, it makes me wonder what’s going on behind the scenes (if anything) to make people feel warmer about Facebook. However, they seem content to continue their sealed lip policy of doing what they want with no user engagement. “We’re Facebook, we do what we want.” seems to be a theme. CEO Mark Zuckerberg even continued with his personal trademark of wearing a hoodie at all times when attending a pre IPO meeting with some of the most powerful investors in the world — seems pretty arrogant and naive, and certainly didn’t go own well with many prominent analysts who questioned the maturity of the 28 year old CEO.

And how about PayPal? As a customer I have had dubious experiences with PayPal. My account has been frozen several times for no reason and has proven a chore to resolve, I have had difficulty moving accounts from the UK to the US, I have had Paypal send old addresses to retailers causing my purchases to go to the wrong place, I have had difficulty contacting customer service and resolving these issues and when finally speaking to someone I was talked to like an idiot by a customer service rep who was clearly just happy to repeatedly recite standard lines from a form. Don’t get me started on fee increases. Not pleasant experiences though I have heard horror stories from people who have had much worse (think having thousands of dollars locked in an account for no reason for months on end, or a small business having payments go awry).

Those are largely service and product issues, but what about the visual side of their brand. Paypal uses the traditional, risk averse shade of blue we associate with large, faceless corporations. Somewhat understandable for a company involved in online finance, users need to feel safe and apparently insipid blue means ‘safe’. But surely they could try a little harder in both service and visual brand to better connect emotionally with users? Dull, lifeless, outdated and cheesy stock images are Paypals sole attempt to engender good feelings and they fail miserably.

Facebook has also opted for the safe, insipid, corporate blue — with 800 million users across the globe from all ages and demographics it’s somewhat rational not to go crazy — but Facebook is about life, friends and sharing, couldn’t it at least try and liven things up a bit?

So what to do about it? Where to look for inspiration?

The first place that springs to mind is Virgin. Virgin is one of the worlds most successful brands. People love it, from the experience, customer service, products, visual brand right up to the CEO, Richard Branson — people love him more than the brand itself, and rightly so, he’s inspiring and has infused that in all aspects of his companies. Virgin asks you to fly at 30,000 feet with them, they are also in banking, health, holidays, trains, mobile phones and a bunch of other stuff you’d want to feel safe with. Are they insipid blue and lifeless? Absolutely not, they’re bright red, vibrant and fun. Virgin has a brand that exudes life. Facebook and PayPal could take a leaf out of Branson’s book, but unless they shape up the way they operate I’m almost glad they haven’t, nobody likes a wolf in sheep’s clothing after all.